


you ain't seen nothing like me yet

by lanyon



Series: Public Disturbance [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU: NYPD detective, AU: No super powers, AU: eco-warrior, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 03:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve Rogers, university lecturer and part-time eco-warrior, recovers from being shot. In which Bucky Barnes, NYPD homicide detective, comes to terms with domesticity. In which Captain America, Steve Rogers' dog, supposes there's room for Bucky too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you ain't seen nothing like me yet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beardsley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/gifts).



Sometimes, Bucky thinks about what might have been. It’s an occupational hazard, in some ways, considering all possible permutations. 

He pauses in the doorway. It’s a little dark in the bedroom and he’s not sure if Steve is awake or not. The white bandages around his head and his chest are stark in the gloom and the sight does nothing for Bucky’s heart-rate. 

Cap is sprawled out at the bottom of the bed. Sharon says he’s been pining for Steve since the shooting. It’s probably just as well Steve hadn’t brought Cap to the liquor store because even if he’s the biggest dog Bucky’s ever seen, he probably can’t do much against guns and bullets.

“You comin’ or goin’, Buck?” Steve’s voice is a little gravelly and weak. Bucky hopes he hasn’t been sent home too soon. He’s not sure he trusts the doctors and nurses to know what’s best for Steve. Not that Bucky can talk. His previous, in the area of caring for Steve Rogers, has not been exemplary. 

He falters at the doorway. 

Steve twitches down the bed-covers. “C’mon, Officer Barnes. Take a load off.”

Bucky walks over to the bed and toes off his shoes. After a heartbeat of hesitation, he unbuckles his belt and unbuttons his jeans and pulls them off too. Cap raises his head and growls softly. 

“‘s okay, boy,” says Steve. “His intentions are honourable.” 

Bucky laughs hoarsely. “That’s what she said.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know,” says Bucky, sliding under the covers and reaching for Steve. “How’s the head?”

“‘s a little fuzzy,” says Steve. “Though maybe that’s the painkillers.”

“And the chest?”

“‘m still breathing, Buck. I’m fine.”

Bucky wants to say that Steve’s not fine, not when he’s lying here, unable to work and unable, even, to take Cap for a walk. He kisses Steve’s shoulder. 

“You better be,” he mutters. 

“Are you threatening an invalid?” asks Steve. He sounds amused. 

Bucky grouses and grumbles incoherently, nestling a little closer to Steve. Cap growls too and then gets off the bed and leaves the room. 

“Clever boy,” murmurs Bucky. 

“Buck, we can’t-” says Steve. “Six weeks. Doctor’s orders.”

“I know,” says Bucky. “But he was watching me. Judging.”

Steve snorts and then winces. “I’m okay, Buck, honestly.”

Bucky runs his hand down Steve’s side, below the level of the bandage and down to his hip. 

“I hope you weren’t wearing these in hospital,” says Bucky, tugging at the waistband of Steve’s black boxer-briefs. “Not sure I like the idea of nurses giving you sponge baths.”

“Oh my god, Buck. I was shot. I’m not _eighty_.”

“I bet you’ll be a hot octogenarian.”

“Wow, do you even hear yourself?” Steve raises his hand to tangle in Bucky’s hair and Bucky moves down Steve’s body readily enough

“Shh,” says Bucky. “I’ll be your sexy septuagenarian boyfriend.” He does his best to ignore the way his heart thuds wildly at that inadvertent promise to spend the next fifty years with this man. He hopes that Steve didn’t notice the implications. 

“Oh yeah? And what’ll we tell our buddies in the home about how we met?”

“The truth,” says Bucky, mumbling now at Steve’s hip and admiring the way Steve’s abdomen is moving under his attentions. 

“What? That you tried to arrest me for murder?”

“It’s a meet-cute,” says Bucky. He kisses Steve’s navel. 

Steve gasps. “Have you started reading those dumb romance books Darcy gave you? Because aggressively pursuing an innocent man for a crime he didn’t - ah! -”

“Worked for the A-Team,” says Bucky. He raises his head and glares at Steve. “Don’t tell me that Face and Hannibal weren’t screwing.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” says Steve, on a sigh. He sprawls a little more and he looks relaxed, perhaps for the first time since he opened his eyes in the hospital to see Bucky holding his hand with an unnecessary degree of belligerence.

Bucky nods, perhaps more fiercely than he intends, and slides down further. He runs his right hand down the front of Steve’s left thigh. He’s always been fascinated by this tattoo; a central red region, surrounded by swirls of red, white and blue, extending down to his knee and up to his ribs. Under the briefs, Bucky knows that the tattoo covers most of Steve’s left butt cheek and that is almost touches the base of his dick. 

Bucky loves this tattoo. He lowers his head to lick a stripe up the centre of Steve’s thigh. 

Steve shifts again, and grunts. 

“Never really had you pegged for a patriot,” say Bucky. “Between all those goddamned protests.”

“I can still be American and hate big corporations,” says Steve. 

Bucky’s not doing a very good job if Steve’s still able to make big words. 

“Doesn’t _sound_ very American,” Bucky says. He drags his fingers up and down Steve’s thigh. 

“I -” Steve stops to lick his lips. His eyelids are heavy, like maybe he’s sleepy, and that’s good, too. “I like being American. Doesn’t mean I always like America.” 

Bucky’s fingertips stop on something. A scar he’s never felt before, in the centre of Steve’s thigh and at the epicentre of the tattoo. It’s small and round and familiar. 

He raises his head again and glares at Steve. “You’ve been shot before.” 

Steve nods. His eyes close. He lifts a hand and waves vaguely. “Indian Ocean. Pirates. It was a whole. Greenpeace. Thing.” His head tilts to the side and he’s falling asleep, even in the face of Bucky’s fury that once there was a time that Steve was hurt and Bucky didn’t know him.

Bucky dips his head and presses a kiss to the scar and tries not to shudder that it is drenched in red. 

Steve’s chest is rising and falling steadily. The bandages are clean. He is alive. 

Bucky crawls back up the bed and reaches for his phone. He hits the speed-dial for the precinct. (All of his speed-dials are for work. He should probably do something about that.)

“Hey, Darcy? It’s Barnes.”

“Is he home?”

“Yeah, all tucked in. Listen, tell Fury-”

“Hey, don’t worry. Sarge already said that if you call, you’re taking the rest of the week off. Says he can’t have a lovesick puppy working homicide, though if you want to send in Rogers’s dog-?”

Bucky laughs. “Hell, no. Who do you think is nursing Steve?”

Darcy laughs too and hangs up and Bucky stretches out on the bed. A few minutes later, Cap creeps back in and, if he didn’t know better, Bucky’d swear that the dog had been giving them privacy. He jumps back onto the bed and turns around three times. 

Bucky’s hand finds Steve’s and he closes his eyes. His heart’s still pounding because he is still terrified but now he gets that he’s more terrified of losing Steve than of being with him for the next - oh god - fifty years. 

He takes a deep breath. He can certainly get through the next eight hours and then breakfast. And fifty years-

Steve mumbles in his sleep. Cap grumbles. 

Bucky lets out the breath he was holding.

“Where else you wanna be, Barnes?” he asks himself. Romanov has always painted a bleak picture of his future; dying alone, in a puddle of alcohol and crime scene pictures. She has always made it sound like a threat and it’s always been okay for her, because she’s got Sharon and they’ve always made love look easy.

Steve squeezes his hand. Well. Maybe love’s not hard. Maybe Bucky's just bad at it. He stares at their hands. 

Fifty years doesn't sound so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> +Hopefully, this is the first of many instalments in this huge 'verse, where Bucky is a failboat and Steve isn't much better, and where they have many, considerably more functional friends.   
> +Title from Bob Dylan's _Make You Feel My Love_.


End file.
